Chilean Thrash Metal - An Exploration

I have been championing the thrash metal coming out of Chile for a bit now, so I thought I would go back to it's earliest days and try to trace it's development into the only relevant thrash scene of the 21st Century. I will try to post here as regularly as I can, but I can't guarantee when and I will have to see how it goes.

Massacre - Pissing Into the Mass Grave [Demo] (1986)

Massacre were one of the very first Chilean thrash metal bands, forming in 1982 as Sepulcro, changing their name to Embrión in '83 and finally to Massacre (or Massakre) in 1985. Pissing Into the Mass Graves was the bands first demo, and is probably the oldest available Chilean thrash recording. It was released in September of 1986 on cassette only. The three tracks featured on the demo are the title track, Pissing into the Mass Grave, Our Everyday Blood and Death Poem. It starts off with an intro of the sound of some poor soul presumably suffering hellish torture before exploding into the title track which is an absolute belter and sounds pretty good here, despite the rough, ie zero, production values. It has an addictive as fuck main riff which is as good as anything the Big Four wrote and rattles along at a breakneck pace. The vocals have a quite annoying echo effect on them, unfortunately, but otherwise are aggressive and harsh-sounding, in common with a lot of South American thrash. The soloing is buried in the production sadly, but from what can be heard it sounds great. I have unfortunately been unable to find a better version of this track which is very sad because it sounds like a rough-hewn deathly thrash diamond.

Our Everyday Blood is more of the same, although the riff is nothing like as memorable as that of the title track and it suffers a bit more because it has even more of the barely audible soloing, which is one of the biggest disappointments of the whole demo because it sounds like vocalist/guitarist Yanko Tolic and fellow guitarist José Miguel Nacrur really let rip on this one. Side two of the cassette is taken up by the almost eight minutes of Death Poem which start off with a chuggy slower riff before exploding into a much pacier affair. The echoing effect on the vocals here, though, is just too much and becomes quite annoying and distracting. Death Poem may suffer from a bit of a case of overbombing with the band chucking pretty much everything at it, but I do like that chuggy riff that keeps making a return at various points throughout the track.

All in all, this is an interesting listen and very early on sets the precedent for Chilean thrash, borrowing from all manner of styles like d-beat, death metal and the black metal of the likes of Hellhammer. It is worth checking out if only for the title track which I think is a thrash classic. The production sucks, but I have heard far worse and if you are used to listening to underground metal demos it shouldn't present too much of a challenge.

3.5/5

Pentagram - Demo #1 (1987)

So, as the title suggests, this is the first proper demo from Santiago's Pentagram who are not to be confused with the legendary US doomsters and, in fact, changed their name to Pentagram Chile in 2012 in deference to the US legends. Despite having only one studio album to their name in 2013's The Malefice, they have been an on and off presence in the Chilean scene for almost forty years now. They were formed in 1985 by guitarist and vocalist Anton "Behemoth" Reisenegger and fellow six-string slinger, Juan Pablo "Azazel" Uribe, both of whom remain in the band to this day. For the demo they were joined on drums by Chronos drummer, Eduardo "Eurynomos" Topelberg with Reisenegger also filling in on bass guitar. Recorded at Nacofon Studios, Santiago in January of 1987, the demo features three tracks, Fatal Prediction, Demoniac Possession and  Spell of the Pentagram with a total runtime of just over fifteen minutes. For a 1980's demo this has pretty good production and is much better than the Massacre demo sound-wise, giving a decent indication of the band's aggressive vitality.

In common with a lot of eighties' South American thrashers, Pentagram took their cues from the Slayer / Possessed school of aggressive thrash that would form the basis of the new genre of death metal. The pace is not quite as relentlessly frantic as Massacre and the songwriting is better with the band exhibiting a greater degree of control over their aggressive tendencies. The riffs are strong and memorable with some nice variation in pacing, although when they let rip, they really unleash hell and I think their aggression is more effective for being so well-controlled. The throbbing, cyclonic riff of closer Spell of the Pentagram is particularly effective and is my favourite on the demo, but they are all terrific. Vocally Anton Reisenegger reminds me a fair bit of early Chuch Schuldiner with his rough and ragged, almost shouted style. The drumming is tight even though it does suffer a bit in the mix and the bass is perfectly audible throughout, as is common with most Chilean thrash. The soloing is OK, but is probably the aspect that most reveals the youthfulness of the band and is one of the few aspects where they could improve significantly.

Simply put, if you are interested in mid-to-late Eighties' thrash and it's metamorphosis into more extreme styles like death metal, then this demo is an absolute must and is one of the best thrash demos you would likely hear. Fans of Slayer, Possessed and Kreator need to check this out.

4.5/5

Necrosis - Kingdom of Hate (1987)

Necrosis were formed in 1985 and featured brothers José Miguel and Andrés Nacrur on guitar and drums respectively. They were both previously members of Massacre (Massakre) and featured on the Pissing into the Mass Grave demo I reviewed previously. The band are another Chilean band with an on/off career, splitting in 1990 after the suicide of then bassist, Alfredo Peña, reforming in 1999 only to split in 2003 due to the perennial "musical differences". They reformed again in 2006 and released three albums before splitting once more in 2017.

Necrosis have much more of a Bay Area sound than both Massacre and Pentagram and sound less extreme as a consequence, coming on more like Exodus or Death Angel. Kingdom of Hate was their first demo, 1500 copies being released in 1987, available on cassette only. The sound quality is very good for a 1980s demo release and sounds very professionally produced, the production on the guitar solos being the only aspect of the production that is really less than stellar, sounding a bit distant at times. The riffing is captured very well, though, and has a nice crunch and depth, whilst the drums and bass are served very well indeed, both being perfectly audible throughout.

Kingdom of Hate contains four tracks with a total runtime of 24 minutes and kicks off with the almost nine minutes of opener, Prayer, which begins with a nice lengthy and classy intro riff, before it gets down to the real business in hand, i.e. thrashing you goddamn ass off! This is a brilliant track that switches from a quicker riff to a slower, chuggier one and back to great effect before encompassing some manic soloing over a supercharged, thrashy blastbeat. Prayer is the kind of longer thrasher that has more progression than a lot of straight-up thrashfests, reminiscent of Metallica's classic-era tracks and is my favourite of the four on display here. Fall in the Last Summer is a track that gets itself into a wicked groove and sounds like a cross between Exodus and Spreading the Disease-era Anthrax and I imagine had Chilean mosh pits heaving. My Fears has a bit of a crossover feel to it, alternating between a throbbing main riff and quicker, punkier breakdowns. The EP closes with the title track which is pretty much a straight-up, no nonsense, Exodus-style thrasher.

Overall, this is a lot more recognisable fare for mid-80s thrash fans, particularly fans of the Bay Area sound and doesn't flirt with extremity and the emerging death metal style as both Massakre and Pentagram did previously, but rather plays it a bit safer. This is still a very good demo and shows that the classic Bay Area sound need not be confined to the US. All four of the tracks available here ended up on Necrosis' debut album, The Search, which was released in the summer of '88 and was their only official release prior to their original split in 1990.

4/5

I had actually forgotten that I had started this thread, so here we go again...

Pentagram (CHL) - Demo #2 (1987)

Pentagram Chile's second demo was recorded in September 1987, comprises three tracks, The Malefice, Profaner and Temple of Perdition for a total runtime of sixteen minutes. Like the first demo, the sound here is pretty good with the "cavernous" sound that would become so crucial to a certain style of death metal in the nineties being present by default and adding a grimy "evilness" to the Pentagram sound. It also possesses a weighty bottom end, the bass anchoring the tracks with a really meaty presence in a way that is still a feature of chilean thrash to this day.

This isn't massively different to Demo #1, but there has obviously been some technical improvements to the playing and a degree of progression in their songwriting. The aggression they brought to the first demo was still present with hats definitely still tipped towards Slayer and Possessed, but there is a bit of complexity creeping in, with Profaner in particular going through any number of tempo changes in order to mix things up a bit.

Unfortunately, despite releasing two absolute killer demos in '87, the band couldn't generate any interest from labels either inside or outside Chile and so, in 1988 they split-up with Anton Reisenegger going on to form power / thrash outfit Fallout.

Here I am once more trying to revive this thread. I'm going to go back a step or two here and listen to Massacre's 1986 full-length demo, the six-track "Altazor".

Massacre - Altazor (1986)

Massacre's second demo is a lengthier affair at 35 minutes with re-recordings of the first demo's three tracks and three new tracks, "Tortured to Die", "Misery Human's Son" and the title track, Altazor. The sound on this is much clearer than on the earlier demo, the vocals have lost most of that echoing effect that I found so annoying and the Slayer-like solos are more audible. You get an even better insight than on the earlier demo into what a great track "Pissing Into the Mass Grave" could be with the clearer recording letting that killer riff star. Of course this is all relative and this is still essentially rehearsal-quality soundwise, but if you are a veteran of listening to metal demos then you shouldn't find it too bad.

The first new track, "Tortured to Die" shows that by this stage it was apparent that Massacre were looking to the more extreme reaches of thrash metal and were most likely getting inspiration in how to achieve such extremity from the early demos of bands like Death and Possessed. The second new track "Misery Human's Son" is, to be perfectly blunt, a bit of a mess and illustrates as much as anything that maybe the band's ambition outstripped their ability to deliver at this point in time. The last new track, "Altazor", is better, being a much more straight forward thrasher with a breakneck pace and some frantic soloing, it is probably the best-realised of the new tracks and illustrates great promise.

Altazor closes out with re-recordings of "Death Poem" and "Our Everyday Blood" and both sound significantly better here than on the original demo, although "Death Poem" still suffers from a case of overkill as it just seems to be a little too ambitious, ultimately coming off as all over the place. I think this sums up the band really - when they are playing straight ahead, agrressive thrash (or deaththrash) then they are great, rifling off riffs and tearing it up with killer solos, but when they get overconfident and attempt to write and play more complex stuff, they come a bit unstuck with "Death Poem" and "Misery Human's Son" not really cutting it for me when compared to the other tracks. "Pissing Into the Mass Grave", "Tortured to Die" and "Altazor" in particular are worth a listen for any fan of South American thrash or death metal.

MASSACRE - Beyond the Psychotic Redemption (1988)

Massacre's 1988 final demo is a four-track affair with a fifteen-minute runtime. Three of the tracks, "Inmolation", "Addicts to Insanity" and "Morbid Death" would ultimately surface on the 2001 album, Psychotic Redemption. This has got a pretty good sound with decent clarity, although the guitars are bit pushed down and the bass is elevated in the mix. By this time the band seem to have tempered their more outlandish ambitions and the four tracks presented here are much more straight-ahead slices of early deaththrash which sees them playing to their strengths, them never really being able to successfully pull off the more ambitious stuff convincingly.

So this tidy little EP of demos that seemed to have them sailing full ahead along with the winds of the zeitgeist should have seen Massacre sailing on to glory with the release of their debut album the following year. Yet, for some unknown reason the band abandoned the visceral deaththrash of their three demos and put out an album of chugging hard rock-infused heavy metal which seemed to flummox the entire fanbase they had amassed and saw them sink into obscurity for a dozen years, before returning after the turn of the millenium.

But, future faux-pas aside, this is an exhilharating and entertaining quarter-hour of south american deaththrash that is probably the pick of the band's three Eighties demos and is a testament to a band that should have had a much bigger impact on the brave new world of Nineties thrash and death metal.

Nimrod (later Nimrod B.C.) - Time of Changes (1988)

Nimrod B.C. were originally a four-piece thrash crew in existence from 1985-91 (as Nimrod). They reformed in 2007, splitting again in 2015 and then reforming once more in 2017. These later iterations leant more towards power metal than out and out thrash I believe. This four-track demo is the sum total of the original band's output and shows the band to be a more intense thrash / deaththrash entity than it's later selves.

The four tracks featured here are "Dark Land". "Time of Changes", "The Message" and "Nimrod" and the EP runs for almost 17 minutes. The sound isn't too bad at all, albeit a bit on the tinny side, but it is clear and gives a good indication of what the band must have sounded like at the time. All of these except the instrumental "The Message" appear on 2008's return full-length, Return to Babylon, albeit in new versions which emphasise a more USPM-style approach than the death-leaning, intense thrash of the originals. Me, I much prefer the raw intensity of these originals over the overblown production and OTT power metal vocals of the later versions. The demo does illustrate well that the band were more technically accomplished than some of their contemporaries, sounding more like a band that knew what they were about rather than a band finding their way. The four tracks are high tempo and pretty tight, well-written affairs that tap into the Slayer-isms of the early deaththrash outfits whilst still retaining something of the early Metallica sound as found on Kill 'Em All. Unfortunately this, like Massacre, is another case of a chilean band with huge potential failing to capitalise on that potential and falling off the radar until returning as a shadow of their younger selves. Still, this is a pretty good demo that is definitely worth a listen if you are interested in the early days of the chilean extreme metal scene.

Warpath - Alternative Dose EP (1988)

Warpath were formed in 1988 by Marco Cusatto and Octavio Arizala of Rust, a fledgling thrash band who were veterans of the Santiago scene, opening for acts like Pentagram and Massakre. They turned in three demos from 1988 to 1990 before splitting, with Alternative dose being the first of the three, released in May of '88. It was released on cassette and featured four tracks, "Warpath", "Morphine Helps You Die", "Advent Days Visitors" and "Alternative Dose" with a runtime of 18 minutes. The demo has a decent sound, although it could do with a bit more of a beefy bottom end, but it has good clarity and allows all the band members to be heard reasonably well.

Technically, the band sound reasonably adept and the songs are terrific thrashers in the vein of early Megadeth, with Marco Cusatto's vocals sounding convincingly similar to Dave Mustaine (without the sneer). The riffs are great and are typical of the chuggers of the time with Cusatto's solos also impressing, sitting somewhere between the primal viciousness of Kerry King and the more adept shredding of Mustaine or Hammett. The duo of tracks that make up side one of the tape are the strongest here with "Warpath" really kicking ass straight out of the blocks with energetic riffing and a nicely developed song structure. "Morphine Helps You Die" probably just edges it, though, as it rips through it's riffs and shreds with a take-no-prisoners attitude. The two tracks on side two don't quite hold to the high standard of the A-side, but are still pretty solid, albeit not quite as well-written.

Overall this is a nice find and is a real diamond in the rough. On the strength of the four tracks here alone, it seems a shame that the band were unable to continue beyond 1990 and hadn't, at that point, released any official material. Of course, like a number of the bands featured here, Warpath reformed in the 2000's (2007 actually), finally releasing a full-length album, Rust, in 2016 which actually features three of the songs from this demo - all except "Advent Days Visitors" which is undoubtedly the weakest track here. To date they are still to release a follow-up to Rust, but are still a going concern apparently.

4/5

Necrosis - The Search (1988)

The full-length album, The Search, was the only official release from the first iteration of Santiago's Necrosis before they split in 1990 and is the earliest chilean thrash album I could find. It was released in July of 1988 on vinyl and limited to 3500 copies with four of it's eight tracks having debuted on the 1987 Kingdom of Hate demo, the lineup here being identical to the one that was responsible for the demo.

As I said during my review of Kingdom of Hate, Necrosis' sound is very much rooted in the Bay Area thrash scene, particular touchpoints being Exodus and Testment and The Search is more of the same, with mid- to fast-paced chugging riffs, tight, aggressive guitar solos and an energetic rhythm section. Songwriting-wise, Necrosis go for a fairly orthodox approach, but they do like to incorporate several tempo changes during most of the tracks, so they seldom turn in tracks that are just generic chugathons and they even have a couple of quite progressive numbers. I have only managed to listen to Necrosis' back catalogue on YouTube, so I'm not sure if this was the case with the original recordings, but even though the full-length has a deeper, bassier sound, the demo actually has more clarity with the later recording sounding a bit dampened and less crisp than the former.

So, any production issues aside, is it any good? Well yeah, it's not bad actually and whilst I wouldn't place it quite as high as either Bonded By Blood or The Legacy, in my opinion it certainly holds it's own against the follow-ups to both of those albums. Kicking off with the title track it immediately dives headfirst into the moshpit with a killer riff straight from San Fran Bay, never really letting up for the whole forty-odd minutes runtime. Second track "Fall in the Last Summer" was for sure influenced by Anthrax's New York sound and Among the Living in particular, originally appearing on the demo, which was released not too long after the Anthrax album and is a decent take on Scott Ian and co's more jagged style of thrashing. The nine-minute "Prayer" goes even further taking a few twists and turns by combining both New York and Bay Area styles into one thrashtastic epic which makes the album worth hearing on it's own. Ultimately, I guess accusations of The Search being derivative hold some weight, to a degree, but with a track like "Prayer" the band seem to have been genuinely trying to stamp their own personality onto the burgeoning South American thrash scene.

As for the new tracks, I have already covered the title track (which is the pick of the four), "From the Sea" is a less than one minute bass guitar instrumental a bit like the latter part of "Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)", "Liar" has a nice chuggy riff and is very solid and the last of the new tracks, "Golden Valley", is a decent enough instrumental with some nice soloing. Track-for-track I would have to say that the material from the demo is the stronger.

As much as I would love a copy of The Search, it is currently shifting for £80-£200 on Discogs!! I enjoyed it a lot, but not quite that much. Still, it is a little bit of thrash metal history, especially for anyone interested in the early South American scene, so the touts will price it accordingly. Incidentally, The Search was re-recorded in 2009 by Kingdom of Hate, who are comprised of original members of Necrosis. Although the production is much, much better, I think a significant portion of the vitality and youthful vigour of the original is lost in the process, making it a diminished release as a result.

3.5/5

Betrayed - Our Option EP [Demo] (1989)

Valparaíso's Betrayed formed in 1988 and Our Option is a four-track demo released in 1989 on cassette. The band went on to record one full-length, "1879 Tales of War", released in 1990 before splitting in 1994. Of course, like seemingly every other 80's chilean thrash band, they reformed in the new millenium (2007), releasing a couple of EPs so far.

Our Option has more of a crossover appeal than the earlier releases from the chilean scene, having a much punkier feel about it. The opening title track combines punky, d-beat style grooves with Scott Ian-influenced, choppy, chuggy riffs channelled straight from the grooves of Among the Living and is a lively opener that very much has a crossover thrash, snotty-nosed, rebellious aesthetic.

The second track, "You Are a Worm" leans even more into the Anthrax influence, whilst continuing with the crossover punkiness - at least initially. This is because it suddenly stops and gives way to a gentle guitar refrain that gives a bit of a pause in the action before the riffing kicks in again, accompanied by an energetic guitar solo which is followed by another breakneck charge to song's end. Meanwhile singer Blas Mateluna spits out the lyrics of everyday injustices with a suitable level of venomous anger, which is ironic seeing as he ultimately became a real estate agent!

Third track is the band's eponymous track, the anti-religious "Betrayed" which, again, displays an enormous amount of youthful energy and vitality and a really cool main riff, but which also sees them struggling technically in places, especially during the guitar solos which tend to get a bit messy. The demo is closed out by a short acoustic guitar piece, accompanied by storm sound affects, called "Alleviation" which is actually very nice, but very much at odds with the rest of the demo and I am not sure what the purpose of it's inclusion was, other than to illustrate another side to the band.

Soundwise the demo is OK and I have heard much worse, although it is obviously nothing like you would expect from modern demo recordings. Musically, I like the band's energy and punky spirit and they come across as a lively bunch whose shows were probably great fun. That said, they were obviously still quite young at the time and their technical skills would need some developing, but their songwriting was quite ambitious for a crossover band, although it too probably still needed work. Overall it's worth a listen and is a neat example of what sort of thing was going on in the metal underground in the late 1980's.

3/5

Atomic Aggressor - Bloody Ceremonial Demo EP (1989)

Now this is a very impressive demo indeed. The cover art is very good, produced by the band's guitarist Enrique Zúñiga and the package has a much more polished look than a lot of the demos of the time (although it is still a cassette demo, so don't expect wonders). The original demo sounds OK, albeit a bit muddy, but if you hear a rip of the 2021 vinyl 10" re-release then the sound has a much more meaty depth to it and good clarity, although the bottom end is still king and the solos in particular sometimes sound a little bit thin, as on the original. It features four tracks, "Beyond Reality", "Bleed in the Altar", "Bloody Ceremonial" and "The Session" - the band even made a video demo of the track "Beyond Reality" (see below).

Musically this is an authentic slab of early South American deaththrash (certainly the earliest example I have found of chilean death metal), the band having shed a llot of the thrash metal influence from their sound and it has an impressive level of aggression and brutality that would certainly have rivalled any number of better-known acts were the band to have taken off at the time. Sadly, that wasn't to be and the band split in 1992 after their third demo failed to garner them any attention from record labels. Of course, things being what they are, the band reunited in the 2000's and are still going, but by then these songs were nothing particularly outstanding and so have never gained the respect that they may have had had they broken through first time around.

For a young band playing extreme metal in the late-80's, the four-piece sound pretty tight and considering that this was their first recording since forming in 1985, it seems they had wisely spent the intervening four years practicing the shit out of the material. I'm guessing that Atomic Aggressor were familiar with the early US death metal demos from the likes of Death and Morbid Angel because the four tracks have more in common with those than demos from more thrash-oriented acts like Possessed and Brazil's Mutilator. Vocalist Alejandro Díaz has a nice guttural sneer and he also delivers some impressive basslines too. The riifs are filthy-sounding chuggers and the soloing of twin guitarists, Zuniga and Jaime Moya, is exceedingly accomplished, stretching well beyond the King / Hanneman squeals so much in vogue at the time.

All-in-all this is an impressive piece of work and is definitely something I could listen to in it's own right, especially in it's later re-released format, not just as a historical documentation of a time and a place, but as a bona fide slab of early death metal.

4/5

And here's that original video demo:

S.N.F. - ...Acting like a Fool (1989)

S.N.F. were a five-piece formed in Santiago in 1987 and this 24-minute, seven track EP is the only recording they ever released before disappearing from the thrash metal radar completely and, unlike a lot of their contemporaries, never returning. The version available on YouTube sounds very professionally recorded and of superior quality when compared to the demos of most of their contemporaries in the chilean scene although, obviously, I don't know if this accurately reflects the quality of the original cassette release.

"Acting like a Fool" sits between conventional thrash and crossover thrash, particularly with it's subject matter of political topics and their irreverent manner on obvious "party track" "Mr. Harry". I am not always the biggest fan of early crossover thrash, to be honest, but the punkier, crossover tracks like "Disorder" and "Euthanasia" would certainly hold up well against the more lauded stuff from US bands like D.R.I. or The Accüsed, in my opinion. Elsewhere, "The End of the World Cabaret", "Soldiers of Nowhere" and "Let's Start Again" are more conventional and thrash pretty fucking hard, it must be said, with some really cool chugging riffs. The timekeeping of drummer Osvaldo Mellado is very competent and bassist Borracho's driving basslines provide able support to the chugging of the two guitarists who also turn in a decent solo or two.

These guys obviously weren't the finished item at this point, but I think for a quite young band this demo shows a lot of promise, yet in a now familiar story, they shortly disappeared from the music scene altogether. I don't know if there was some external factor that saw all these promising young chilean thrash bands disappear, or if it was just a question of economics and maybe the necessity to start earning a living forced them away from music. Unfortunately this seems to have cost the metal world a number of interesting acts.

4/5